Free roaming

7.5

With the enormous success of the LEGO movie LEGO Games creators decided to branch off and create their own LEGO based world this time taking the best part of their own LEGO series and the gameplay from another great series, Grand Theft Auto, with its open worlds and the freedom given to the player to explore them. If you have never played a LEGO game before this game is played like a platformer and it is really more of a puzzle based game but you still get lots of action. The story stars Chase McCain a detective who was previously run out of town but has to come back to find and capture Rex Fury who has just escaped from prison. As you go through the game you have to play his different personas, not just a cop, but also a bad guy and many others.

Graphically the title looks great. I have to assume this is what a nextgen game looks like. There were a few times where things would just pop up and occasionally the frame rate would glitch for a second or two but these are very much minor problems. The open world approach that Grand Theft Auto brings is perfectly married to this game; I love the sense of freedom to explore this somewhat big LEGO world that they have created. There are plenty of places that even if you search around them you have to have the right ability to enter certain areas for a thorough search and so there is plenty of replayability to come back and find something new when you have obtained the necessary permissions.

Now the gameplay controls are fine, just like the usual LEGO games. The jumping controls are very loose and so you are occasionally prone to over jumping, but since you cannot die you just respawn back where you were so it's not really that much of a game spoiler. You can use grappling guns to get to high points or use dynamite to blow up rocks and such like. One of my favorite pastimes was finding hidden tracks to follow and it was a lot of fun just following up the clues along them.

The Wii U gamepad controller can be used as a map most the time, and it gave us a few video chats from headquarters to keep the story flowing. It can also be used to scour the area much like the way as in Arkham City. One of the new additions to this LEGO series is the ability to drive a car all over the map; in fact there are cars, motorcycles, helicopters and trucks to drive and again the controls are a bit loose. You can, and often do, crash into things but it doesnt do much damage to your vehicle most the time.

As with most games there are a couple negatives. Firstly, the game is only a single player game which is very odd as most other LEGO games are multiplayer. Secondly the loading times were atrocious.

It's a fun game with lots of catchy moments for you to enjoy and it shows much creativity, and with the sense of freedom it gives its good points far outweigh its few bad points.